I Am A Real Person

When Time Washington bureau chief Michael Scherer got a call from a telemarketer named Samantha West, he knew the voice on the other end of the line wasn't quite right somehow. Yet Samantha West kept insisting she was, in fact, human. OTM producer Chris Neary finds out who, or what, Samantha West really is.

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Comments [9]

Johnarri
from UT

I used to work for one of those companies in the united states. Often there would be several responses assigned to each key that would cycle through. If there was one that was particularly applicable you could mute the program and play the specific response necessary. There may even have been a bit of erratic static that was played during the mute. One time the dialer got a guy that said he wrote for family guy. He asked if i liked my job. and i responded with the "UUHHH no." response. he started laughing. he went on with a Really you don't like the job? "*heh* no." He laughed some more and said he would put this in the show. The three of us laughed said our good byes and hung up my program, callee and I.

I was a little surprised by the 'cyborg' theory that Chris Neary came up with: it wouldn't have been my first choice.

There are AI companies out there (I am acquainted with the technology behind one of them) that are almost certainly capable of generating those responses quite automatically, with no happy button-pushing telemarketer sitting out back. So I would guess that this is just the next wave, and it really will be purely robotic. For some time I have been waiting to see when the tech that I knew was in the pipeline would filter down to the street, and I think your story today was actually that moment.

I'm so glad you did this story. A few months ago I had just started a new job and got a call at work from one of these robot/cyborgs. After a few minutes, I asked it if it was a computer and it hung up on me. I was pretty sure it was a robot, but also worried that I was mistaken and had insulted a client.

Quite honestly, I'd rather talk to Samantha West than try to traverse the accent behind button pusher.I find it extremely frustrating that companies off shore telemarketing to places where the accent is indecipherable. This seems like a very reasonable fix!

One angle I'm surprised didn't come up in the story is that this tech has been in use by the severely disabled for years. The most media friendly is Stephan Hawking, who has a number of things he wants to say programmed into his device which he then uses to communicate.

I wonder if companies employing this tech are attempting to counter the biases associated with the stereotypes assigned to individual telemarketers who present with heavy accents or dialects from outside the regional or national norms.